Growing Up Too Fast

In just a couple of days Caleb will be 7 months old. At 6 months he weighed 19 pounds (76ish percentile?) and was off the charts for height and head size (no surprise there). He's working his hardest to keep up with Zach.

Love those thunder thighs and little tush

He'll use anything to try and stand up

Caleb's a fast crawler now and is able to join us wherever we are in the apartment. When he catches up with us he tries to climb up our legs until we pick him up. When I'm changing Zach's diaper and Caleb's in the room, Zach inevitably finds Caleb trying to climb all over his face and chest. This often gets both boys laughing. Caleb's also quick to get into whatever Zach is playing with which is frustrating to Zach. Thankfully Zach's reaction is to give me a look that says "get him out of here" rather than knocking Caleb over or something. Caleb's our little shadow.

Caleb hates being left out of things. For a couple of months now we've had to put him in his booster chair at the table every time we sit down to eat because leaving him on the floor makes him upset. Another example is when we were making no bake cookies with Zach and left Caleb to play with his toys. As you can see from the pictures below he was ticked until he was given a spoon to "help".

Caleb loves feeling like a big boy. His favorite solid foods are ones he can put in his mouth on his own (Baby Mum-mums, Gerber puffs, and Cheerios). He also LOVES drinking from cups and sippy cups with water in them.

Teething has been going on and as of about 2 weeks ago Caleb has 2 bottom teeth to show for pain.

Cold carrots make great teethers

Though their slipperiness gets pretty frustrating

Massagers are also surprisingly fun for sore gums to chew on.

Caleb loves looking at and banging at his little reflection friend in our entertainment center

Caleb loves interacting and playing games. He loves sitting across from us and pushing a ball back and forth. He will also repeatedly pull things over his face then kick until we pull the item off and say "peek a boo!"

From day one Caleb has been our little cuddler. He loves to be held tight and to wrap his hands around our fingers. When feeding Caleb he'll raise his outside arm straight in the air and wave it back and forth until I give him a finger to hold. When fingers aren't available he'll content himself with holding onto a nose.

Caleb is such a happy, smiley, and vocal guy. He's got a deep voice like Zach and is often cooing, grunting, and laughing. He only needs someone to smile at him in order to get his whole face to light up. The video shows a pretty typical scene around here. Zach missing his pants is a common occurrence lately since he yanks them off every chance he gets.

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Caleb is such a fun little guy to have in our family. I love watching him learn and grow and share his enthusiasm with the rest of us. We sure love you Caleb!

You know your wife loves you when ...

Me: "So I did something bad..."

Jen: "What?"

*Passes the Sacrament Meeting program*

Jen: "Are you serious?!"

Apparently when you agree to speak as a couple in Sacrament Meeting you ought to tell your wife before you completely forget about it.

Even so, Jen did a great job speaking with ~10 minutes prep time. Zach "helped" by running up on the stage and leaning over the edge to smile at the congregation, distracting everyone with his cuteness. Within minutes Caleb was with the couple behind us and Zach and I were in the hall. During the rest of church Jen received as much sympathy as I heckles.

Once she made it through the 15 minutes of extemporaneous public speaking, she forgave me and even admitted it was kinda funny. As long as it never happens again.

Houston's Ice-pocolypse

Over the last couple of days we've been on "freeze alert" which seems to be the cue for Houstonians to panic and expect apocalyptic disaster! It's amazing we survived unscathed.

Here are a few of the ridiculous things we saw/heard:

- Students were told on Thursday that schools would be cancelled because it might snow.

- Some of the offices downtown sent people home early on Thursday because it looked like it might snow. Sadly, Derrick's work isn't so great at over reacting.

- Friday morning we woke to a thin layer of ice on everything so of course all the highways and toll roads were closed. This made it so Derrick had to take the day off. We loved having him here!

- Our brother-in-law almost got stuck on his business trip in Mexico since flights into Houston were being cancelled. His plane was re-routed to land in San Antonio which actually had snow. Go figure.

- We've talked with one person so far whose family stayed inside all day because they were to scared to face the "dangerous" roads.

After chipping the thin layer of ice off our car windows, we "braved" the outside to run errands a lot of the day. The roads had no sign of ice on them but were much less crowded than usual. It was really cool to see tiny icicles coming off of the tips of the palm branches (fronds?). I wish we'd gotten a picture of that.

Now on an unrelated note, I wanted to post some pictures from our last minute Groundhog's Day celebration. We decided right before getting the boys to bed that we'd make dirt cups in honor of the day. Because of our use of baby bowls and rush in letting the pudding set they ended up looking more like mud pies.

Zach's way of helping us cook is to sample as much of everything as he can. The best is when you have the chance to get your hand cover in straight sugar.

Caught in the act while making pudding

Smashing some of our Zach-friendly (non-wheat, etc.) vanilla wafers for light colored dirt or sand

Enjoying the messy goodness now joined by whipped cream (snow) and sprinkles (ants)

Sleepy Caleb really wanted to get some of that goodness in him

Our little gummy bear groundhog which did not see his shadow so it looks like winter will end early.